


Stained Fingers Across Your Cheek

by hariboo



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Minor Survivor Guilt, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-12
Updated: 2014-07-12
Packaged: 2018-02-08 13:59:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1943811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hariboo/pseuds/hariboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke misses drawing. Clarke also really wants to draw Raven and Bellamy, but that comes later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stained Fingers Across Your Cheek

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts).



> So this was SUPPOSED TO BE STRAIGHT UP OT3 PWP (which, tbf, that _is_ still coming, fingers crossed) but then yeah…. my mind went left when it should have gone smut. Now, I guess you can call it a Clarke/drawing/CRB character study, but it’s not really that either. I’m just trying to figure these kids and all their shit out, basically. Figure out how they all bang, more accurately. 
> 
> For Jordan, because well this was her accidental prompt, then her [actual prompt](http://ladygawain.livejournal.com/83112.html?thread=894120#t894120), and super bonus her birthday weekend is happening! Best enabler I have. All information about the Ark I picked up from the show’s wiki and because of the language issue (how come everyone speaks only English if there were 12 fricking INTERNATIONAL stations) I’ve kinda made everyone a little bit polylingual - there is at least a basic understanding of more than one language - though it only shows up in a few scenes.
> 
> Obviously I’m wildly speculating on everything that happens post season 1 finale especially in the Mountain. Unbeta’d, all mistakes are mine, please forgive me when I will probably find them two months down the road.

> **Chiaroscuro** (English pronunciation: /kiˌɑːrəˈskjʊəroʊ/; Italian: [kjarosˈkuːro]; Italian for light-dark) in art is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition. 

 

It’s her favourite term. She reads it in an art book back when Mrs. Jaha was around to babysit them and they would sit in the library. She would repeat the word over and over until it became a rush of mangled breath.

-

When Wells was little he would trade his things just so she could draw. When she found out she made him stop. He still did it, mostly for holidays and birthdays, but less than before when she started trading herself. And she had loved him for it. Wells had always been there for her, always understood every part of her, understood how much she loved feeling the smooth barrel of a pen or pen against her fingers, how nothing made her smile like charcoal and ink stains under her nails. Even for Go-Sci resources were carefully monitored, if with a degree more freedom than some of the other stations, especially frivolous things. 

Nothing is more frivolous than art on the Ark.

Her first set of colours were in a watercolour set that had a few of the paints missing. Wells got them for her thirteenth birthday. The set came with a small brush that fit in it’s case. You’d have to uncap it and put the two ends together to make the brush long enough to hold. Clark carried it around everywhere she went for weeks. She would scrounge up paper wherever she could to draw and paint on but it wasn’t always easy. Paper on the Ark was precious, everything on the Ark was precious, maybe even considered a commodity, even in Go-Sci. By the time she's taken to the Sky Box less than half the colours were left. In the cell she only had broken pencils and pieces of charcoal that one of the guards smuggled in for her. They came with her food every few months. Clarke would clutch them in her hands and used them up until they were nothing but stubby little things that stained her fingers. 

She let herself think it was her mother smuggling them in. 

Clarke supposes she always knew better, but then the lie hurt less. 

-

On Earth, Finn found her pencils. 

Part of Clarke thought of how useless they were, except maybe for mapping, but they hadn’t gone out to mark the territory yet. Other could find uses in them, she supposed, but mostly she thought of them as hers. She grabbed them, stuffed them in her pack, and later hid them in her tent. Paper was scarce in the camp, even more so than it had been on the Ark, but she would snatch pieces up when she could find them. She filled them with doodles and lines, but also: Wells’ face (he was the first person she learned to draw), snippets of the camp life, Octavia’s sharp eyes, the curve of Finn’s ear, Murphy’s shadow, Miller’s brows, Monty and Jasper’s hands, the lines of Raven’s chin and cheeks, the twist of Bellamy’s smirk. She tried to draw Charlotte once. She couldn’t. She crushed the paper in her hands, almost threw it away, but paper was scarce. She smoothed it out and covered every in of it with Wells’ smile.

They all burned in the camp.

She burned the camp. 

She walked on the ashes of the bodies she condemned. 

(Bellamy. Finn.)

The ache in her chest heavy and crushing when the red smoke comes. It’s almost a relief as she falls. 

Her pencils and paper were gone.

-

The Mountain Men were… 

Liars. 

They were liars at their core. Clark doesn’t want to think about them. Their voices, their gloved hands. White rooms with lights that never went out, questions she couldn’t-- wouldn’t answer. The only good thing they did was fix up Raven. Pulled the bullet out of her spine after Clarke would refuse to do anything until she knew her people were alive and healthy. Until she knew Raven could run. 

Monty had mouthed not to trust them that first day with that cold cold floor at her feet. (On the Ark everyone wore shoes and socks almost all the time, the floor was cold there too.) Clarke had nodded. He didn’t have to give her that warning, there was only one person she felt she could trust anymore. (And he was gone, burned up like the paper that had the curve of his smile.)

Bellamy had told her they believed in her more. She hadn’t understood until a cold voice says to her that none of remaining hundred (seventy-five now, seventy-five) were talking, only would ask about her. Still, they don’t let her see anyone but Raven in person. Monty she sees through her window, the others through video feeds as proof they live. It doesn’t matter, Raven is the only she needs for now. 

She only gets five small minutes with her each day after the surgery. These people here clearly don’t know them at all. Raven could burn them all down in less time if she could. Clarke would let her.

“I can override the locks,” Raven whispers in Spanish, as she hugs Clarke before they take her away. They don’t know if these people speak anything but English, but just in case. Just in case. Clarke wasn't great at Spanish -- most Go-Sci people's second language is Chinese or Russian -- but she's okay at it. 

“Do it. Tomorrow, when they bring you lunch.”

“Whatever you say, Princess.”

The word makes Clarke laugh, her first laugh since the dropship doors opened onto her own Pompeii; it makes her chest ache. (She burned them, turned them into ash and bone.)

Clarke gets herded back to her room and catches Monty’s eyes in the viewing window.

She breathes out against the glass and watches it fog up. She draws a bird with two swipes of her fingers and smiles at Monty. He grins, smart enough to figure out what she’s trying to say. She wipes at her drawing and thinks for a beat before she fogs up the glass again. Back on the Ark one of her dad’s co workers had been Korean. It had not been one of the main languages of the Twelve but she’s heard Monty slipping into it with a couple of the other kids in camp. Min Jung had taught a little of the language when Clarke was small. Clarke heard she took over for her father after he was floated. Clarke wishes she could remember it now.

Instead she writes a quick shorthand and hopes Monty understand.

He nods. Monty is so her favourite. 

-

When they escape, Raven is still weak on painkillers -- curses in the bastardised Spanish and Portuguese most of the Mecha Station speaks -- but her legs hold up under her. She can run, but not without help. 

Clarke kills one of the guards with a pen she took from one of the doctors they knocked unconscious when he tries to grab them. The death is quick, if messy, the skin of the neck is so soft. The blood stains her fingers like ink does, but she knew that already. Her hands haven’t been clean since they landed. 

Earth has taught her a lot about blood. Clarke sometimes feels her legacy, should she even have one, will be drawn in it.

Killing brings her no satisfaction. Not like finishing a drawing does. _Who we are and who we need to be to survive are different things_ echoes through her head as she pulls the pen out and holds it like a knife. She should have stolen a scalpel. 

Raven grunts at her side, jaw set, her chin sharp (the sketch just had the hint of the curve of her mouth, full and smiling) and Clarke snaps back to her senses. She’s alive, Raven’s alive and they’re going to get everyone out. That’s all that matters now.

-

Anya stares at them and then--

One of the guards is dead. Anya is fast and deadly but right now she looks to want out of the here as much as them. 

Clarke and Raven look at each other-- 

They’ll fucking take it.

-

Jasper and Miller cover them with stolen guns as the others surge around them, rushing down the hall to the open doors. Seventy-five, seventy-five. All dressed in white. The look like wild ghosts rushing out of haunted house. (Clarke never liked ghost stories.) Anya doesn’t seem to need any guns. She leads them out, rushing into the light. She seems to know where she’s going so Clarke yells at the others to follow her out of the Mountain.

That’s when it happens and it’s like a punch to the solar plexus. 

Once, what seems so long ago, she never knew what violence felt like. Now she knows all too well, knows exactly what a hit to the solar plexus feels like. It’s a painful kind of breathlessness that for second you feel you can’t get past.

Speaking of ghosts…

Bellamy crashes through the hall just as they get the doors open. Raven’s “holy shit” loud in Clarke’s ear. Monty’s happy shout echoes down the hall.

Clarke can’t even feel relief. There’s no time for it. 

He smirks - dangerous lines shaded on the edge of a map - and says “couldn’t wait for the cavalry, could you, Princess?”

Clarke’s mouth is empty of words. All she can taste is the ash. She burned him. Them. Finn bursts into her vision, pulling Raven’s arm from her shoulder to help Monty carry her. Clarke almost fights him, hating the idea of letting Raven go. She promised herself she wouldn’t let anyone else go. (She burned them like paper, but they’re here too. Ghosts, she thinks. Too many ghosts.)

Bellamy touches her shoulder.

“Clarke, come on, we need to get out of here.”

She catches Raven’s eyes. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

Clarke nods at Finn and Monty.

“Go.”

She and Bellamy are the last out, making sure all the others get out first. Jasper yells and slaps Bellamy’s back when he seem them. Miller nods. 

Clarke looks behind and catches a shadow watching them with bright eyes. She grabs Bellamy’s gun and fires down the hall. The bullet doesn’t reach it’s mark and those eyes don’t look away from her.

Liar, she thinks. They were all liars. 

Bellamy calls her to move. Clarke runs. The smoke the Mountain throws at them is yellow and makes her eyes burn but they run and run and run.

She doesn’t remember when Bellamy’s hand curves around her elbow, but he keeps it there the whole time.

They make it back to the camp by some miracle and hide back in the drop ship. They lose Anya someway along the way. It doesn’t surprise Clarke, she figures Anya hightailed it to her people the second she could. Clarke would have done the same. She knows they’re not safe in the camp anymore and a look at Bellamy tells her he feels the same, but right now it’s the only safe place they know.

Everything back at camp still looks like battlefield. They can’t sleep outside, no way, and even if the wall was still up, it’s not safe. Nobody argues when she tells them to stay inside. 

The Mountain Men left everything in tact, they had no need for their meagre supplies. Raven locks them in for the night. Bellamy agrees with her that they need rest first, tomorrow they’ll figure everything out. She’s still holding the bloody pen in her hand. Holds it until he pries it out of her fingers. Her hands are stained, so so stained. All she can think about is drawing. She hugs Bellamy because she can’t think of doing anything else. 

She barely feels his hands when they come up tentatively around her back and pat it, once. She wants to laugh at how awkward he’s being. She doesn’t know if she can laugh anymore.

Stepping back, she catches his eyes and shrugs at the question she reads in his face. 

“Get some sleep,” he says and pushes gently at her shoulder. It’s almost tender.

She doesn’t realise how exhausted she is, or that she hasn’t let Bellamy’s dirty jacket go until Raven pulls at her. She tugs Clarke down next to her. There’s a small scar of Raven’s jaw now, Clarke notes, as Raven pulls her to her side, it curves down from her chin. Clarke notes Finn is off to the side, staying conspicuously away from them. She can’t bother to give it anymore thought. Clark clenches her fingers in Raven’s hand. 

That’s how she falls asleep, with the sound of Bellamy telling everyone to get rest and shut the hell up.

-

Who knows what the Mountain Men really wanted from them, but Clarke doesn’t think it was anything good. To many questions that left her feeling cold. 

-

Seventy-seven, now.

-

She wakes up with Bellamy sitting on her other side. His head is against the wall, and she can feel Raven’s light snores against her neck. 

She shifts and moves to sit up. Raven grumbles but lets her move. Bellamy’s eyes open as she settles but he says nothing. She watches his hands. They are dirty, dirty under the the fingers nails, flecks of dried blood covering them. She looks at her own. 

“You threw away the pen,” she says.

“It was covered in blood.”

Clarke sighs, resting her head against the bulkhead. “I have nothing to draw with now.”

“Clarke?” She can hear the confusion in his voice. She doesn’t explain herself, can’t really. (Wells would have understood.)

She closes her eyes so she can’t see his shoulder as she turn her head towards him. She burned him. She made him ash. 

“I miss drawing.”

By her side Raven stirs. She squeezes Clarke’s hand and that’s when the tears leak out. Bellamy lets his dirty jacket catch her tears.

-

They find the Ark camp. Camps. More than one station came down, more than one survived. Not enough, not enough at all, but Clarke can’t worry about them anymore. 

Her mother holds her, clutches Clarke like she’s her air. Clarke cries and thinks it’s unfair that her mom is still alive but her dad isn’t, that Wells isn’t. She’s glad her mom is back, thinking her dead was one of the worst things she’s ever felt, but she thinks it’s unfair. (She only felt bone deep relief when the doctors at the Mountain told her Raven would be fine, that she wasn’t losing her too. And when she saw Bellamy again it was like air forced both out and back to her lungs. Thinking Bellamy was dead hurt even more than her mother’s in some ways. She figures it’s because it was her fault. She couldn’t have waited any longer, but it had been her choice.)

When her mom and Councillor Kane tell them to join she surprises herself.

“No,” falls from her mouth. Bellamy says it at the same time. 

Her mom looks between them, looks over Clarke’s left shoulder at Raven, who stands and says nothing, but doesn’t move from Clarke’s side.

It makes Clarke want to smile.

She and Bellamy tell her mom and Kane that the Hundred (seventy-seven) just can’t share the same camp with the Ark anymore. They can’t live the way they want them too. 

Her mom looks like she’s torn between pride and heartbreak. 

Clarke can’t bring herself to care. She won’t deny anyone to go back to their families, if they so wished, she and Bellamy agreed, but she--

The Ark is no longer home. It’s broken down skeleton less so. More than that she hates looking at her mom and thinking she’s more like her than she even knew. Hates it feels like curse. Except unlike her dad, Bellamy was still alive. (Finn was still alive too, thankfully, and she feels shitty for forgetting about him.)

-

She’s sitting behind Raven, checking on her scar again -- “It’s small, they did a good job,” Clarke had said the first time she checked it. “There’s a little bruising and you probably shouldn't be moving around so much--”

“I’m fine. Shame about the scar,” Raven had said, leaning back into Clarke’s hands.

“Why?”

“Was hoping for something more badass.”

It had made Clarke grin as she reattached the bandages. “You don’t need anything to make you more badass.”

“Damn right.” -- and covering it with the seaweed paste. Her mom checked Raven over, gave her pretty much the same assessment as Clarke did, but couldn’t do anything else. They didn’t come down on the medical station. Raven reaches behind and grabs at Clarke’s fingers, looking over her shoulder. Clarke traces the line of her cheek with her eyes. She’d draw Raven in warm colours, deep reds, soft browns, mossy greens. A glint of sharp yellow in her eyes. 

“Hey, you okay?”

Clarke thinks about lying. She’s a shitty liar. She squeezes Raven’s fingers before pulling away.

She huffs out a low, “I don’t think any of us are.” She finishes bandaging Raven’s back and carefully lowers her shirt back down. Raven’s hair falls over it like a dark waterfall, warm on Clarke’s fingertips. 

“Want me to braid it?”

Raven nods. “Yeah, thanks.” Clarke works her fingers through the thick strands and lets her fingers fall into the easy rhythm of braiding. 

“Devil’s playthings…” Raven murmurs. It takes Clarke a second to realise she said it in that Portuguese-Spanish mix. 

“What?”

“It’s an old proverb.” She says; English this time. “Idle hands are the devil’s playthings. My mama used to say it to me all the time because I couldn’t keep mine still. Born tinkerer.”

“I was the same. Always drawing.”

Raven looks over her shoulder at Clarke again. She grins and Clarke grins back. “One day, when we’re finally not running for our lives and I’m gonna ask you to draw me something.”

“You’ll be my first.”

Something sparks in Raven’s eyes at that. Clarke wants to draw that spark so very much.

-

There was something tangible about drawings that everything else in her life lacked. That’s how it used to feel anyway, and she never really understood why. Not at first. As she grew she just liked the feeling that the drawing was _hers_. Even if she gave random drawings to her mom, dad, Wells, Mr. Jaha before he became Chancellor Jaha, there was something about knowing she had made something tangible, something _hers_ even when she gave it away that person would have something of hers. 

On the Ark teenagers start training to become members of the work force as early as fourteen. Clarke assisted her mom in her first surgery at fifteen. She had a healer’s hands, her dad used to say, just like her mom. She used to look at old art books and wonder why she couldn’t have artist hands. It’s not that she doesn’t understand how important it is to be a healer, to be able to put someone back together, hold them together. (Know how to take them apart. Another lesson Earth has taught her.) Ever since they’ve crashed on Earth she’s been grateful for what she knows. It’s saved the lives of people she cares about and she wouldn’t trade it away. This is not a world for artists. Hers has never been a world for artists. 

Clarke is not one. She’s a healer, she’s a killer, but god, she loves to draw.

The most time she ever had to draw was when she got locked into a small cell because she wanted to save lives. 

There has to be some irony in that.

She hasn’t been able to draw, really draw in that wonderful time consuming way since she’s been freed. There’s probably some irony in that too. 

She fucking hates irony. 

Drawing used to be something hers. Something only shared when she wished. It had been her selfish, greedy thing in a place where everything is meant to have a purpose. She misses it. She should have asked Lincoln where he got his sketchbook.

-

She hears her name being called roughly two second before something hits her in her stomach. 

Clarke _oofs_ and looks at Bellamy, who to his credit does look slightly chagrined. Not enough, not with that mouth of his curling at in amusement. 

“What the fuck, Bellamy?

“I didn’t think you’d have such shitty reflexes.”

Clarke glares and looks down at what hit her. She blinks and ducks down to grab the object, because no way. No way in hell or, actually, Earth. No way.

The binding is rough leather. It looks familiar. 

“Did you steal this from Lincoln’s cave?” Clarke has to ask and tries to control her grin. The pages are blank, a couple rough edges in the front tell her some may have been ripped out. There’s a long stick of sharpened lead tucked into the cover. Shit, she should feel bad about this shouldn’t she? 

All this can think about is how finally finally finally she can draw again. 

Bellamy shrugs. “It’s where me and Spacewalker hid. I don’t think the Grounder is going to miss it.” There’s a sharpness in his words Clarke wonder if it’s in part because of what happened to them or where Octavia is and isn’t now. She doesn’t push. 

“You shouldn't have stolen it.” She’s already rubbing the paper between her fingers. It’s thick, looks hand made, and sewn together. They should probably look into making their own paper. Vaguely she wonders who might know how to do that. 

“You want me to take it back?” he smirks, walking over to her side, feinting like he’s going to take the book back.

Clarke is already clutching it to her chest. “No!” She feels her face flush, and glares when his smirk grows. “Shut up.”

He chuckles, low and rough and Clarke wonders how that can be translated onto paper. The thought is fanciful enough she cuts it off quick. Last thing she needs-- last thing they need is to complicate-- 

Bellamy looks away from her and Clarke didn’t even realise they were kinda staring at each other until then. 

This is really the last thing they need. 

He says something about checking in with Miller about supplies and turns from her. She follows the broad line of his shoulders, thinks about how she’d shade in the nape of his neck.

Clarke clears her throat. “Bellamy?”

He half turns; suddenly the image of Raven looking over her shoulder flashes in her mind. Raven had looked over left shoulder, Bellamy is looking over his right. Clarke thinks of their profiles filling up page, the back of their heads blending in the middle the edges smudged under her fingers. 

She thinks about ink stained fingers against the soft curve of a mouth, tracing a smattering of freckles, and it’s not paper she sees.

Oh shit.

Bellamy is quirking an eyebrow at her and Clarke swallows, shaking her head. Oh shit shit shit.

“Thank you,” she chokes out, tries to make sound as natural as possible, but her mouth is dry and her belly feels tight. 

“You’re welcome, Clarke,” and his voice softens, even as he throws cocky smile at her and turns. Clarke forces herself to look away from the line of his back this time and takes a deep breath. She turns and heads back to the dropship. Her fingers clutch at the leather binding of the book. 

She does feel bad it’s stolen. She’ll see about making paper and owing Lincoln one.

-

The hatch to the third floor opens. 

Clarke slides herself deeper into the corner she’s been sitting at. It’s been a quiet day. She may be hiding, trying to steal some time for herself.

“Hey, there you are.” Raven’s voice filters through the room and Clarke relaxes. The tension in her shoulders uncurls and she stretches out one leg. 

Raven slides down next to her and leans her chin on Clarke’s shoulder. It’s sharp and digs into Clarke’s skin. Clarke slides her a look, even though she doesn’t mind. She likes it even. Raven’s presence by her side has become something she sort is scared she might need. Bellamy’s face flashes across her mind. _Too_ , she amends, _she might need too_. She might be hiding from that thought. It might be why she came up here. 

“Yeah, here I am. Anyone dying?”

It’s been a quiet day, Clarke isn’t holding her breath for the quiet to last, but she’s taking it any second she can. Her fingers are stained and even if the peace she feels right now is fleeting she’ll cling to it as she can.

Raven doesn’t answer. Her mouth softens and then flattens out. Clarke starts worrying when Raven’s chin digs harder into Clarke’s skin. The feeling bites; she still doesn’t shrug Raven off.

“Raven? What’s wrong? Please tell me someone isn’t actually dying.” She doubts it; Raven wouldn’t have walked in slow and warm had there been any trouble.

Raven stiffens, Clarke feels how she tenses against her side and she turns to fully face her. Her jaw is set, her eyes are dark and hard. Their faces are very close. Clarke swallows. 

“Raven?”

She shakes her head, “It’s nothing. It’s stupid.” The braid she’s taken to wearing since Clarke braided it swings over one shoulder. 

“I’m sure it’s not,” Clarke says, setting down the (stolen, gifted) sketchbook across her lap. The drawing she was working on is not done yet; she’s got the lines down, but the shadows are missing. The shadows are important. They’ll make the highlights brighter. But she’s not thinking about that now as she reaches for Raven’s hand and holds it in hers. “What’s--”

“I thought I was going to be me first.” 

The words snap out of Raven’s mouth hard and fast and sharp. Her eyes stare flatly at the sketchbook.

Clarke almost reels back at them, not quite understanding, and then she grins. Raven starts to pull away, but Clarke tugs her back, closer. 

“Raven…”

“Like I said, it was stupid. I’m gonna go--”

She moves away again and Clarke tugs at her hand, again. She opens her mouth but Raven cuts her off, again.

“Look Clarke you can draw whoever the hell you want to, it’s really just me--”

“You were first,” she says, she grabs at the sketchbook and flips to the page before. There’s only a couple pages filled in the book so far. Clarke watches as Raven looks down at the sketch. She watches as Raven traces her own lips, jaw, chin.

“I’m a little rusty,” says Clarke, suddenly self conscious. Wells is the only person she ever really mastered drawing.

Raven brightens as she looks at the page. She rolls her eyes and grins at Clarke. “Remember when I said we found something you weren’t good at? Well this is not it.”

She shrugs. “I missed drawing. You’re a good subject.”

Raven wraps her arms around her and hooks her chin over Clarke’s shoulder again. “It’s really great. You drew me like the total babe I am.” Clarke laughs. Raven’s breath is warm against Clarke’s cheek. It takes all of Clarke’s self control not to turn her head, wanting to feel them against her own. She uses her pinkie to smudge the shading in Raven’s mouth on the paper. 

“Can I watch you draw?” Raven asks, arms loosening around Clarke. 

“Sure.” Clarke nods, flipping the page and presses the charcoal against the paper, filling in the angle of Bellamy’s shoulders. She and Raven sit there, quiet and comfortable as Clarke finishes the drawing. After she finishes it she hands it over to Raven, a silent question and Raven tells her it’s great and maybe she shouldn’t have made him so handsome looking. Clarke rolls her eyes, but sees her point, and then leans forward. That last part wasn’t exactly planned, but Raven’s mouth is warm and she drops the sketchbook between them when she reaches up to cup Clarke’s jaw. 

-

At night now they settle together. It’s a new habit they’ve fallen into, the three of them, sleeping near each other. Clarke and Bellamy just find it easier to be within talking distance of each other in case anything comes up during the night. Raven, well, besides from being their tech and weapons expert, she and Clarke just stick close now. Finn looks at them both now like he understands, but also like he’s completely baffled. It’s a little funny.

Anyway, the sleeping arrangements. It works. Until they’re finished rebuilding the new camp most everyone still sleeps in the dropship and most people thankfully leave their corner alone. 

Tonight, Clarke tosses the sketchbook to Bellamy. He doesn’t catch it, it falls heavy in his lap. He looks up at her and Raven, his eyes dropping to their joined hands, saying nothing but Clarke can see him swallow. They all live with teenagers, they all _are_ teenagers, save Bellamy, Clarke heard the whispers about her and Raven since they got out of the Mountain even before they were true. 

She grins. 

“I didn’t think your reflexes were so slow, Blake.”

Bellamy smirks, “Funny princess.”

He looks through the first pages carefully. Clarke watches as his eyes flick up to her and down back to the book when he sees himself in them. Maybe Raven was right, she shouldn’t have made him so handsome. Raven steps forward, pulling her down, tilting her head to sit on Bellamys other side. Clarke sits down slowly, watching as Raven winces a little as she settle. Her back is healed, but there’s always going to be some discomfort. 

"Shit, princess, you're actually good." He slides a look at her that has her pressing her lips together. "Not that I doubted it." Her arm brushes his each time he turns a page.

"Screw you, Bellamy." And she wants to snatch the sketch book away, pull it to her chest and keep it as hers, only hers. That's when Raven speaks up, leaning forward, flipping a page over herself. She catches Clarke’s eyes and smiles slow.

"She's real good," she says and there's no denying the tone there. It makes Clarke flushes, it makes Bellamy swallow, hard. "Check this one out." 

And now Clarke really wants to pull the sketchbook away, but she meets Raven's eyes again. They're bright and smiling and it makes Clarke want to lean across Bellamy and kiss her. Raven had asked her to draw something alright, and Clarke can barely look at Bellamy when his eyes roam the drawing. 

"Fuck," he breathes and the sound is low and thick, almost a growl. On his other side Raven grins. Clarke can see her press closer to his side. She can see how she’s pushing her breasts against his arm. It’s Clarke’s turn to swallow.

"I asked her to draw that," Raven says and her mouth is so close to his. Clark can imagine it too clearly how they would look together. Also, Raven had told her they slept together. The surprising thing had been the kind of jealousy Clarke had felt. Equal, split between both of them, for both of them, but mostly because she missed it. Missed the opportunity to see them together. That's when Raven offered up the chance, something Clarke couldn’t have ever hoped would be an option. 

Because Clarke wants to know how they look pressed together, wants to draw the shades of their skin, the angles the fit in. She’s greedy for the image.

Bellamy's head snaps up at that, but it's not Raven he looks at. His eyes meets Clarke's and they're burning. He and Raven have dark, gorgeous eyes, and fuck she so has a type. Her thighs feel heavy and she licks her lips, eyes flicking down to the drawing.

The sketch is pretty pornographic, to be frank; three bodies, tangled up together. Raven had directed her fingers, sitting behind her. whispering in her ear how they should look like, her fingers brushing Clarke's hips. It’s no mistake that there are two women in the image, and one man. It's a miracle Clarke finished it. Now Bellamy looks at her and she feels the same surge of want she did then, but it's sharper. He could say no--

Bellamy lets go of the book and curls one hand high on Clarke's thigh. He won't kiss her now, she can tell, not in the middle of the dropship with almost everyone around in varying levels of sleep and wakefulness, but he squeezes her thigh and stares at her mouth. His fingers dig into the soft skin of her inner thighs over her pants and he looks at her with his answer. Clarke lets out a shivery breath and over Bellamy's shoulder, her sharp chin hooked over it, Raven grins and chuckles low. 

"She's loud, you know. Have to cover her mouth with my hand," Raven whispers and Bellamys hand squeezes harder. His eyes slam shut. 

Clarke glares, "You curse in Spanish. I'm so gonna burn that page.” She wants to slide away, she’s not used to this kind of open flirtation. She’s not used to flirtation at all. Clarke doesn’t even realise she’s even shifting until Bellamy’s hand squeezes her thigh again. He opens his eyes and fuck, she is so screwed. She could try a million times and never get the heat of that look down on paper.

"Don't you dare, princess." 

“Agreed.”

Raven reaches over and grabs Clarke's hand, her smile softer, more teasing, and then climbs over Bellamy to press against Clarke’s side and stretch out on her stomach between them. Her back aches a lot easier now and she’s taken to sleep on her stomach to relieve the pressure and strain. Clarke brushes her fingers over the fine of Raven's spine, spreads her palm out over the scar under the shirt. She looks up to see Bellamy looking at them, his dark eyes soft and then he smiles at her. She smiles back. He tugs at Raven's ponytail. 

Raven sighs. Cracks an eye open to look at Clarke.

"Draw me something pretty, princess."

Clarke laughs but is already grabbing for her sketchbook, opening to a new page. Any excuse to draw, you know. "Bossy. But okay, what?" She curls her knees up to leans the book against and waits just in case Raven really does have a request. 

"Hmm, I dunno..." she sounds sleepy already, burying her head on her folded arms. “Pretty.”

Bellamy rolls his eyes and settles against the bulkhead, adds, "Something you want."

Clarke looks at them both, the angle of their faces, how the shadows fall across them and sets her pencil to paper. 

-

"You two are useless models, you know," Clarke says, leaning against the rockwall in Lincoln's cave. Wells used to be a great model. He could sit still for ages. Raven and Bellamy are always in motion one way or another. 

Across from her Raven pulls always from Bellamy, mouth swollen, and send a sharp and dirty grin at Clarke. Behind her an explosion fans over her shoulders. Lincoln’s really very good. They use also really stop using his cave as their hook up spot.

"Not our fault you end up focusing on the paper more than us. Come here," she beckons. Clarke pointedly draws something on the paper. (The line of Raven’s back is interrupted half way down by Bellamy’s hands.)

Bellamy laughs, tugging Raven back against him, but his eyes are heavy on Clarke's chest. She fights her flush. They're all pretty much naked, anyway, but her nipples are peaking through the thin material of her tank top in arousal. They were giving her a hell of a show. She swallows. She's really lucky she even manages to finish sketches of them, especially when they’re like this, warm and naked and looking at her with dark dark eyes. 

"You were napping, I got bored," she pouts, playful. Something she's found she can only really be with them anymore.

"Not napping now," Bellamy smirks and Raven waggles her eyebrows. She crooks a finger at Clarke and it’s so ridiculous, so weirdly sexy. Clarke is already moving towards them. They both wrap their hands around her at the same time, their fingers dig into the soft skin of her waist and thighs. 

She's practically straddling them both, her eyes roaming the details of their faces like she doesn’t already have them memorised, but neither complain about the weight, pulling her closer. 

She pulls them closer too.

Her hands are stained with chalk and charcoal (they _really_ needs to stop stealing Lincoln’s left over supplies) and when she touches them, brushing her fingers over Raven's jaw, dragging her hand over Bellamy shoulders she transfers the pigment onto them. They get stained under her hands. More importantly they _like_ her stained hands, and still kiss her.


End file.
